** spoiler alert ** I think the book is a bit long. The first 3/4 of it could be edited down a little bit. I wouldn't take out much, but some of the flashbacks made me forget what was going on beforehand. There are typos throughout the manuscript, not enough to detract from the story, but I hope editing will catch them before publication.

I hesitated between giving this 3 stars or 4. On one hand, I liked that Cat recognized her fears and kept trying despite them. On another, I had a couple thematic problems. First, I'm not so sure that I believe any one trusting someone who called them such an awful name before they even knew her real name. Jason would have had to work really hard before I said another word to him even though he did know something. Second, I'm still confused about why it took this much to pull Cat out of her funk after so long in that funk. Why didn't she react some time in the last two years? (If it wasn't actually two years, then I misread something) Finally, this may not have been the intention, but Cat went straight from Beef being a closet homosexual to being a pedophile. Maybe if Robert had been older, it wouldn't have been so bad, but do that many people automatically assume that a gay guy is willing to go after a kid. I'll give the author that Robert's behavior was suspicious and that could have indicated that he was being molested, but it read to me more like Beef was teaching Robert how to get girls than grooming him. I think it was really that phrase that bothered me. Without it, I think I could have understood jumping to the conclusion. It is a small town and Beef did hate himself and his sexuality an awful lot combined with him being on drugs it made him unpredictable.

I liked the ending. Everything was resolved. It wasn't neat or pretty and it was more of a new beginning than an end, but it really worked. I do wish that Beef had been forced to confront everything sober. I wanted a chance for him to do something to redeem himself, but the drugs prevented that. Like I said, it was a good ending, but I did feel a lot sorrier for Beef than I really wanted without some other cause than drugs messing him up.